


Baby Steps

by felineranger



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 19:13:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10905699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/felineranger/pseuds/felineranger
Summary: Kochanski wants to help Lister, so she turns to the one person who she thinks has the answer.Herself.





	Baby Steps

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Janamelie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Janamelie/gifts).



Kochanski hadn't left out of anger. She'd left to find help.

After yet another hopeless, pointless, fruitless argument with Dave that had -as always- got them absolutely nowhere, she'd made up her mind to try a different tactic. Smeg knew she wasn't getting anywhere at the moment. She just couldn't seem to reach him. They were going desperately wrong somewhere and the only solution, as far as she could see, was to talk to someone who was doing it right. And she thought she knew just where to find that person.

Wildfire had been stowed away in the landing bay ever since Rimmer had returned. She knew he would be annoyed by her taking it, he was still very attached to the old girl, but that didn't bother her too much. He was always annoyed about something, and this was for the greater good.

It had taken her some time, but eventually she'd found Ace's home dimension; or at least a version close enough for what she needed. Getting onto Mimas Test Base had been easy, Wildfire still had all the clearance codes logged, and her retinal scan had got her through security. After all, she was Kristine Kochanski. But before finding her other self, she'd taken a detour.

She found Lister in the tech rooms. She found a perch, up on the gantry out of sight, and watched him working for a while. The moustache made her smile. It didn't suit him, but it was such a transparent attempt to look more grown up. More responsible. He was trying so hard, this Lister.

He beavered away, stopping occasionally to sip his tea (just two sugars, she noted, instead of four. Just barely trying to fight that sweet tooth) and clean the glasses that looked so alien but endearingly cute on him. At one point he popped a screwdriver in his mouth as he tweaked something, and it gave her a pang of affectionate longing. The habit was so familiar- so _Dave_. She'd had to walk away.

She found her counterpart in an office in a different part of the base, working on some calculations, and thankfully alone. Introducing herself was less dramatic than she'd expected. This Kochanski had helped develop the Wildfire project, she was well-prepared to deal with the whole 'I'm you from another dimension' experience, even if she hadn't expected it at 3pm on a Thursday, or for the purpose of relationship advice.

They'd swapped life stories, trying to pinpoint the big changes, the moments where their paths had diverged over the years. This version of her had had a slightly less privileged upbringing, although by no means difficult. Her father had missed out on the promotion that had funded Kristine's cyber school tuition, pony and large family home, but had still maintained a stable career and comfortable middle class life.

After a while, Kochanski got around to the real reason for her visit. She explained the string of bizarre events that had led to her current situation, and the problems that had driven her to make this journey.

"He's given up. On getting home, on our relationship, on life. And I don't know how to bring him back. I don't know how to motivate him. I saw your Dave down in the lab and he looked so focused. So driven. I want that for him, but I don't know how to give him a purpose again."

The other Kochanski drummed her fingers on the desk and looked thoughtful. "You know, my Dave went through something similar. After Ace left. It was hard for him in so many ways. There was always the guilt, I think, that he let him go, knowing all the risks. Not that he could ever have talked him out of it." She sighed sadly. "It left a mark on his soul. And all those years of work...The hours of his life he spent on the Wildfire project...Suddenly it was all over with nothing really to show for it. Just more theories. Ace was gone, the ship was gone. There was a hole there for a while and I wasn't sure I could ever fill it. Not completely."  
"So what did you do?"  
"Gave him a new challenge. Wildfire was a spectacular feat of engineering. It won't ever be matched in our lifetime. Nothing else was ever going to compare, so I got him to switch fields. He's working on something else now."  
"What?"  
"Finding god."  
"I'm sorry?"  
"The SIU project. The search for an intelligent universe. Setting up a space station to try and make contact with the universe itself."

Kochanski slumped back in her seat. "That's very impressive, but it doesn't really help me. I can barely get my Dave to brush his own smegging teeth right now, let alone push the boundaries of human understanding."  
"You just have to start smaller. When I met Dave, he had no drive, no ambition. He never stuck at anything. You know why?"  
"Cos he's a lazy so-and-so?"  
"No. That's what everyone thought. Hell, it's what I thought too for a long time, until I realised the truth."  
"What truth?"  
"He was scared."  
"Scared?" Kochanski frowned, "Of what?"

"Let me tell you a story. This is years ago, back in the first few months we were dating on Red Dwarf. Dave was rooming with Lew Pemberton, remember him?"  
"I do. Nice guy."  
"Lovely guy. He noticed Dave was handy, and helped him work his way up the technician ranks. It took a bit of pushing and prodding, but he made it without too much trouble. But then he started pushing him to go higher - take the engineering exam and become an officer. Well, Dave applied to take the exam, but then all of a sudden..." She put her hand up flat in Kriss's face. "Boom. Total brick wall." She dropped the hand and sighed. "It was like he lost all interest. Lew and I tried to motivate him without much success. I nagged him to study, but every time I went round to his quarters his books looked untouched. It was so frustrating. At first I thought he'd got cocky, then I started to think it was just too much like hard work for him. So, twelve weeks go past like this, and the day of the exam rolls around. And he's still so damn blasé about the whole thing. I walked down to the exam hall with him, and all the other candidates are there with their notes doing last-minute revision and Dave's just munching away on a cronut like he hasn't a care in the world. So I wish him luck and walk away, because there's nothing else he can do at that point, and certainly nothing _I_ can do.

'The next day his results come through the ship's internal mail, and as he opens the envelope, his hands are shaking. I mean, so badly that he can't hide it even though he's trying to. And I don't understand why, because surely if he was this bothered he would have studied more, right? So he pulls out the letter and reads it, then says, in this tiny shocked voice, "I passed." I was almost as shocked as he was, because trust me, that was not the result I was expecting to hear. But it's true. And he didn't just pass. He didn't scrape through. He got a really good grade. And it was in that moment, I realised something very important about Dave."  
"Which is?"  
"He's terrified of failure. He deals with it differently these days, but it's taken a long time."  
"So...He didn't study for the exam, because he didn't believe he could do it, so he didn't even try?"  
"Not exactly. Because here's the thing," her other self leaned forward. "He DID study for the exam. He must have. Smeg knows I love Dave, and he's a smart little cookie, but he's not a genius. There's no way he got those marks without putting some effort in. He just didn't want anyone else to know. Not even me."  
"Okay, I get it. And if he'd failed the exam, he could have shrugged it off and pretended it wasn't a big deal, that he hadn't really tried that hard, that he didn't really care about being an officer."  
"Exactly. And I went through this with him pretty much every step of the way through his career. The funny thing is, every time he had a confidence boost, he would power ahead. Once he had that promotion, he worked his little butt off and didn't try to hide it. He excelled. Right up until they put him forward for the next exam. Then suddenly..."  
"Brick wall?"  
"Yep. Every single time. "I like my job. I don't want to change offices. I'm in the middle of a big project right now. I don't need any more money." There was always an excuse."  
"But he always did it."  
"Eventually."  
"So, how do I get my Dave to overcome that fear?"  
"I just told you. Boost his confidence."  
"How?"  
"Baby steps. Maybe start with getting him to brush his own teeth."

When she made it home, they were all waiting for her in the landing bay. Rimmer gave her the most cursory of greetings before pushing past to check she hadn't messed with his ship. Dave hung back, watching her with wounded but hopeful brown eyes. "You came back."  
"Yeah," she gave him a hug, "I did. I suppose I must love you."

It wasn't quite that easy. He was wary of her for a while; swinging between cautious aloofness and clingy neediness on an almost daily basis. He would shower her with affection one day, then withdraw the next. She made no demands and let him dip his toes back into the relationship one by one, as if her love was hot bathwater and he was still testing the temperature.

There were robotics textbooks in his room. "It's nothing," he said when she asked him. "Just something to pass the time."  
"That's nice," she said. "It's a good hobby for you. After all, you do such a good job maintaining Kryten."

Two days later, he mentioned casually that he'd upgraded some of the skutters using a technique he'd seen in one of his books. "Clever boy," she said, and kissed his cheek.

A week later she found him in the medi-bay, tinkering with the medi-bot. "Whatcha doing?"  
"Just trying to improve the accuracy on this damn speech recognition sensor. Your medical is due next month, and you know what happened to me last year."  
"Hmm. Yes, I don't really want a boob job just yet."  
"I'll try and fix it, but it's quite complicated."  
"I'm sure you can do something. I have every faith in you."

Over the next few months, Red Dwarf underwent more maintenance than it had in the past ten years. Droids were upgraded, vending machines serviced, wiring replaced. When Kristine's birthday arrived, Dave presented her with a small box. "It's a silly thing really," he said, shuffling nervously, "I just threw it together when I had a moment here and there."  
She opened the box and drew out a dainty mechanical songbird on a perch. When she waved her hand in front of it, it flapped its copper wings and whistled a short excerpt from 'The Magic Flute.'  
"I love it!"  
"Really?"  
"Really, really!" She gave him a kiss. "You know, you should sit the robotics exam. You're more than capable after all the work you've done recently."  
"Oh, I don't know. That seems like a lot of hassle, and there's really not much point."  
"You could put the certificate up on the wall to annoy Rimmer."  
"That's true. I'll think about it, when I get a chance. But y'know I'm really busy right now. This place is falling apart."

He said nothing more about it until several months later, when an envelope arrived in the internal mail. He opened it, read through the letter poker-faced, then smiled. "What's that?" she asked.  
"I passed my robotics exam."  
"I didn't know you'd sat it."  
"It's not a big deal. It wasn't very hard."  
"Well done, you."

There was a short pause as he stirred his tea. "I might think about sitting the advanced exam."  
"You should."  
"I mean, at some point. Maybe. It's just a hobby."  
"If you passed the advanced exam, that would officially make you an officer."  
"Whatever." Lister shrugged and sipped his tea. "It's not like I care about any of that smeg."  
"I know," she said, reaching over to pat his hand. "But for what it's worth, I'm very proud you passed this one."  
"Like I said," he picked up his tea and headed out, "It wasn't that hard."

Kochanski looked at the letter still lying on the table. She read the grade on it and smiled.

He'd got an A*.


End file.
